The Crimson Eyed King
by ChaoticIrony
Summary: I am Sasuke, of the House of Uchiha. Son of Fugaku and Mikoto. Brother to the devil himself. My path was laid out long before my birth. I am a tool. Built for one purpose only. To avenge my clan. . . Sasuke-centric/Itachi NOT yaoi and slight SasuSaku.
1. One

* * *

I am the wolf.

I am the night, the hunter, and the crescent moon.

I am the cold chill. I am the shadow surrounded by light.

I am the uncharted island in an endless sea.

I am all the things that go against my kind. _Humanity_. I share so little of their nuances, their emotions, their . . . _feelings_.

Their incessant need to love. To laugh. To cry.

These things were gone from my life a long time ago. There is no place in my world for them. My memory of those feelings now is like a hazy, blurred dream.

It is as if they never existed for me.

I am as if dead. No more alive than as if buried six feet beneath the earth.

I am Sasuke, of the House of Uchiha. Son of Fugaku and Mikoto. Brother to the devil himself.

My path was laid out long before my birth. I am a tool. Built for one purpose only.

To avenge my clan.

* * *

I wander the lands, from village to filthy village, searching for him.

What I seek is always there, teasing me. Always just beyond my grasp but never quite close enough to reach.

I can feel him there. I can feel him through every bone in my body.

I know he feels me too.

I've lost track of the number of days I have followed him, lost track of the months and the seasons. The years? I have followed him through rock and over mountain, across a desert and atop of an angry sea.

And yet still, he eludes my grasp.

I lie awake at night, tossing and turning. I feel the tug of sleep but I dare not close my eyes. He haunts my dreams.

But soon the dreams come when I am awake. Visions of the confrontation to come. Without warning my focus drifts from the task at hand and suddenly I'm there, above that waterfall. And so is he. Standing there before me, both still as stone as the rapids cascade through our legs and gush over the edge plunging to their death against the rocks below. Roaring like thunder all the way down.

He just looks at me. Motionless. Emotionless.

His eyes stare blankly at me as a single tear rolls slowly down his cheek. It drops from his chin.

It is as red as the clouds on his cloak.

Then suddenly it is different again.

No longer above a waterfall, I am inside a house. A house that is frighteningly familiar. It is my parents' house. I am standing over their lifeless bodies, watching my mother's pale face, illuminated and flickering in the firelight.

But something is different. This is not like in my memories. My eyes are dry, and my heart beats calm and steady. My hands are not shaking, and I do not feel sad.

I feel relief.

A door creaks behind me and I spin around quickly.

It is him.

_Itachi._

I prepare to defend myself, hand swiftly snatching a kunai from my belt, only vaguely pausing to notice that I am not cowering in shock as I should be, but preparing to take my vengeance without hesitation.

But as my eyes fall upon him, I stop.

Something is very wrong.

This is not the cold, heartless man of legend.

It is nothing but a boy, much younger than I am now. His black eyes penetrate me with some unspoken question. It chills me to the bone.

There is accusation in those eyes.

For what, I cannot know.

As I look upon him his eyes lock with mine, and I can see it now. This is not Itachi Uchiha, assassin of Akatsuki. This is my brother.

This is the caring boy. The doting brother. The perfect son.

This is the boy I loved.

My hero. My nii-san.

A face I had all but forgotten. Just another ghost from my past, features blurred through the passage of time and the dimming of memories, but somehow, in this dream he is as clear as the day of their death.

I try to tear my gaze away but find I cannot.

His eyes . . . they burn into my soul. Anguish, and hurt, and betrayal seem to focus on me all at once in those eyes, and flow from his into mine like an invisible river of emotion. My Sharingan aches with a blinding pain, pain which continues through my very eyeballs and drives deep into my skull. Like a knife into a watermelon.

As it does an image is burned into my mind.

Those eyes. _My_ eyes.

This is how _I_ looked at _him_.

On that painful night, so many lost years ago.

* * *

I awake as if from a fit, heart pounding in my ears and sweat pouring from my brow.

My hand instinctively goes for my belt, clutching tightly hold of the first weapon I find there. My Sharingan activates on its own, so in tune with my own reactions that it can sometimes sense danger before even I do. I scan my surroundings.

Nothing.

I rely on my other senses then, the scent of the ever changing forest around me, the feel of the vibrations of the earth beneath my body, and on my keen shinobi hearing.

Silence.

No, not quite. Suigestsu, the fanged one, whistles relentlessly through his pointed teeth. The large one is snoring so loudly he could cause an avalanche in Switzerland, which is the complete opposite of the redhead, who is currently so quiet it almost seems impossible that she could have so much to say during the day. I swear her incessant babbling is driving me slowly insane.

Along with other things.

I lie awake most of the night. On constant alert, ready and waiting for any sign of attack.

I have to be ready.

The day I have been waiting for most of my life is near.

I can feel it.

* * *

**A/N: Just a little something that's been floating around inside my head for a while now. The chapters will be short and I don't know how often I will update as I have other stories which take priority, but I will try to update as often as I can.**

**I hope you like - as always, PLEASE REVIEW! I would love to hear what you think. XD**


	2. Two

* * *

I am as invisible as the air.

I am a wind. A whisper. A thought.

If I wish it you will never see me. I could pass amongst you without moving a blade of grass, a grain of sand, one single hair on a single head.

I am a ghost.

And I have become very good at being invisible.

_

* * *

_

_I sit atop that audacious mountain, the one I used to look upon as a child. I used to idolize the faces carved there, like everybody else, sucked in by their legends, their propaganda, their bullshit. Their lies._

_As I look down on them now I marvel over how blind I was._

_How naive I was then. They treated us all like fools, spouting their spirit of fire crap while marching us towards our deaths while they watched us from their mountain. Laughing at us._

_Overcome with a sudden childish impulse I relieve myself over one of their heads. I think it is the Third._

_I lean further over to check. The smile drops from my face when I realize it is the Fourth._

_A sudden pang of something that I think is guilt grips my chest. The moment is so brief and unfamiliar that I can't possibly be sure._

_It is probably just an old injury anyway._

_But as I turn away the likeness on the stone remains in my mind. _

So familiar.

_Another image of my past that lingers to haunt my thoughts. Time and again I had tried to push him to the hidden recesses of my memory, but, as persistent as he had been in reality, so too was he in my nearly forgotten memories._

_I force my troubled thoughts back deep into the darkness of my mind. There will be time for that later. At this time I am here for another purpose._

_I am here for her._

* * *

My team are beginning to question our mission.

I can hear them whispering. I can feel their doubt, their uncertainty about me. They think that I am stalling. That I am purposefully delaying the inevitable.

I am weary. A weight as heavy as a mountain rests on my shoulders, and I wonder how much longer I can go on.

Maybe they are right.

* * *

"Sasuke?"

The sound of Suigetsu calling my name rouses me from my thoughts. He has asked me a question, and it is a while before my distracted mind can focus enough to answer.

"He is headed west."

I can feel his eyes still on my back, studying me.

"Get some sleep, Suigetsu. We leave at first light."

The moon is high, and narrow. The sliver of blue light it casts leaves many shadows.

Long before morning I am gone.

Headed east.

Towards _him_.

* * *

**A/N: I know these are really short chapters compared to my usual 10k word chapters lol, but I figured if I keep them shorter I will be able to update more regularly.**

**How sad, nobody has reviewed this yet :`( Please review, I'd love to know what you guys think since this is very different to my usual style XD**


End file.
